1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications systems and, in particular, to a communication system employing a TAPI interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI) is a high level programming interface for Windows(trademark) which supports many types of telephony applications associated with conventional analog public telephone lines, PBX phone lines, ISDN phone lines, and the like. Thus, TAPI allows a communication application to support numerous telephony operations through a variety of mediums by making a function call to TAPI which will drive the hardware (fax/modem card, DSP card, network switch, and the like) coupled thereto.
The TAPI architecture 100 is illustrated in FIG. 1. As shown, the TAPI architecture 100 includes a TAPI implementation 104 interfaced to telephony application programs 102. TAPI 104 provides a connection to a TAPI service provider, such as a TAPI server 106, which then interfaces to hardware such as voices cards 108a, H.323 interfaces 108b, or PBX""s 108c. 
In TAPI 2.1, for a client to be granted access to be able to control a line or phone, an association must be set up between the client and that line or phone of the TAPI server. The program tcmapp provides this service by generating a configuration file that TAPI 104 then uses when it operates. The program tcmapp is a graphical user interface configuration program that requires manual, line by line entry. The access of a client to lines and phones of a given TAPI service provider 106 is enabled via an association of a provider ID (PID), a client name, and the line or phone itself.
When a TAPI service provider 106 is uninstalled and then reinstalled, the TAPI system 104 assigns the provider a new, random PID. However, the client line associations within the TAPI system 104 still use the old PID as the association key. Since this association no longer exists, when the new TAPI service provider 106 is enabled, all the client associations that were previously there are removed from the TAPI system 104.
In order to reset the client configurations, the tcmapp program must be re-run. Since several thousand lines and phones can be associated with the TAPI service provider, re-entering all lines and phones on a line by line basis can be cumbersome and error prone.
These and other drawbacks in the prior art are overcome in large part by a system and method for client configuration in a TAPI environment according to the present invention. A TAPI method according to an implementation of the present invention includes installing a TAPI service provider and associating a first PID with the TAPI service provider; re-installing the TAPI service provider and associating a second PID with the TAPI service provider; and automatically associating TAPI devices that had been associated with the first PID with the second PID.